ONEIROCRITICISM UNCROWNED. 95 at church, up pops a young Oxonian in the pulpit. She cries out presently to her sister, 'This is the very face of the man I saw in my dream.' Sir William Somes's lady did the like." Oneirocriticism is at present in the sere and yellow leaf of its fortunes. It sprang up to meet us like a god; it retires from us with the hang-dog expression of a rebuked costermonger. Once it was the revelation of the divine, taking its part with the revolutions of the planets in the government of sublunary affairs; it is now an instrument by which a chap-book pedlar may best ascertain what is the smallest number of lies which Cinderella will insist on in return for her penny, without considering herself cheated. OPINIONS ON DREAMS. CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF DREAMS-SUMMARY OF OPINIONS. LURKING here and there in the corners of histories and other works not ostensibly concerned about dreams, or else running through treatises which are too crude to make them interesting or valuable except as monuments of transitional opinion, are to be found records of the various dream-theories held by ancient poets, philosophers, and other persons of distinction. Even a summary of all these theories would be too voluminous for our limits. Quotations from the more important and representative authors will be found in their due order in the following pages. But besides those writers whose ipsissima verba are offered to the reader, there are others whose just claims to notice may be satisfied by condensed statements of their opinions. These epitomes, it has seemed advisable, at once, and apart from the others to whom a more extended treatment has been allotted, to group together. It will happen that one or two names will occur again as authenticating peculiar and special views; and when this is the case the general rule will be observed, of allowing the extracts to appear in the words of their several authors. Democritus, and after him Epicurus and Lucretius, ac |